causality, voting, and recidivism
Jeremy Freese regularly offers insightful comments about social science research in his blog. Today he had an interesting post about "causal-sounding insinuations of relationships" between felon re-enfranchisement and recidivism, based on this statement from the Iowa governor:
Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa announced yesterday that he would restore voting rights for all felons who have completed their sentences, ending what advocates for voting rights had called one of the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws in the country. Mr. Vilsack, a Democrat who has been called a dark-horse presidential candidate for the 2008 election, pointed to research showing that ex-prisoners who vote are less likely to end up back in prison.
I'm not sure that's a statement of causality, but I guess that's not really the point. I confess that sometimes I slip into causal thinking even when I am careful to avoid making explicit causal inferences in my writing. I offered a (way too) long comment based on a recent law review piece with Jeff Manza.
posted by christopher uggen @ 7:24 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I think we have a responsibility as social scientists to build theories of causality even when we don't have direct evidence that X causes Y. Causal theory is what makes our work interesting. Our goal is not just to show that correlations exist, but to indicate that those correlations mean something. Therefore, I think that we should argue in our papers that discovered relations between variables imply causality even when we have not demonstrated a causal relationship. The challenge of future research is to uncover the mechanisms whereby the causal arrow actually operates. But that's just my way of thinking...
The task is to first define causality.
To argue causality exists "even when we have not demonstrated a causal relationship" seems more problematic to me than living with correlations. Again however, such discussions depend entirely on how you view causality in the social sciences.
Brayden and Punk, I'm still wrestling with this one. In every study there is a gap between what I know (or think I know) and what I can establish empirically (or think I can establish empirically).
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